I'll stop the world and melt with you.

I want this to be our festival summer anthem.

Perfect harmony, or is it?

As the infinite wisdom that is Facebook quizzes tells me, I am, like Goethe, primarily concerned with the emotional aspects of life and strive above all towards harmony - so possibly that is the reaosn why I am currently jumping up and down with glee as I am listening to the newly emerged version of Perfection as a Hipster (part of Stuart Murdoch's God Help The Girl project) with Neil Hannon singing the male vocal part. I am smitten. You can always trust those incidents to elate me most where two really good friends of mine, though previously unknown to each other, unexpectedly get along really well. And this is probably the musical equivalent of such a situation. Neil Hannon singing Belle & Sebastian songs. Just let it melt on your tongue!
I cannot wait for the film to come out, even though that might still take a while.
And apparently Stuart Murdoch is also going to collaborate with Those Dancing Days, so that's another thing to look forward to.

In other news, I have returned to Vienna from the UK - so by the way, you're in for a whole lot of pictures and travel impressions that are waiting somewhere down the line. But, oh, Vienna ... Having spent the last week primarily with two persons who evidently find it so unbearable that they feel/felt the need to emigrate I am obliged to defend it, although it makes me feel a little inadequate.
I do love Vienna, but in a very multifaceted and often not unambiguous way, a way that makes it hard to explain it to anybody else, especially if they're convinced that it is rubbish. I can understand where they're coming from when they say that the people here are horrible and grumpy - on my tram journey home from the inner city I overheard one Viennese man dressing down a tourist who had (apparently) asked for help, because the man from Vienna did not speak a word of English and reacted in a typical aggressive-defensive way, leaving the poor tourist very confused, and another conversation between two elderly women who started arguing over which one of them was more unreliable and which more generous in forgiving said unreliability. Jesus!
So yes, I know very well why I usually have my headphones on when I'm travelling on public transport: That makes it so much easier to concentrate on the more positive aspects like sweet and gentle and perfectly attired indie-esque men sharing a short part of your itinerary. (*insert spazz*) Of course that isn't the only reason why I love Vienna. It isn't even one of the main reasons why I love it.
I love it because it's home, and because it's not perfect, and it doesn't make me feel insignificant by being too hip or too posh or too amazing. Vienna works perfect for me because it reflects me, and sort of nestles into my own quirks and the shape of my personality - or maybe it is the other way around. It can be depressing and tedious, but never in a way that leaves you completely depressed or bored. It always manages to entertain you gently while never being too exhausting (unless you seek to be exhausted, haha.) And yes, there's no denying: Vienna is whiny, grumpy, obsessively self-conscious and hypochondriac, and its moments of genius seem barely capable of making up for the grey, everyday sameness - but somehow they do, and somehow one learns to affectionately tolerate even the bad bits, simply because they're so characteristic of this city.
At any rate, I don't think I am going to move away any time soon.

Times of happiness and hope!

Edinburgh, baby!



Glasgow, maybe!



Fears and feelings of guilt desperately repressed.

I'm going away ...

See you in a while.

A Bit of Special and Hannon ...

I think I've posted this excellent video before, but here it is again, plus the requested mp3 for do(t):

Our Love Goes Deeper Than This, doesn't it?

Hmmm.

Hmm???

Any minute now, it's gonna blow.

Polytechnical.

Driving home from our country trip to Kevin's "mansion" yesterday, we listened to an old NME mix cd with songs by Transgressive Records bands. In fact this mix had always been a favourite of mine, containing stuff like Mechanical Bride and Johnny Flynn as well as this fabulous cover of Kids In America by The Young Knives. Yesterday, song that had previously escaped my attention stood out - it's odd listening to old music again, after your taste and your preferences have changed slightly, when you're a slightly different person with a little more past and a little less future.

I bring to you now: Polytechnic with Pep - a song to appropriately accompany happy and careless (?) days in the sun and the freedom and absolute happiness embodied in driving through an early summer evening in a car, with friends. Fittingly, the video also features driving.



"The one where the dog drives us into space."

And Battle, Tendency, for people who have a tendency to battle.

Random Stills from Blow Up

I am very bad at making stills, it seems I lack the patience. Still (haha), I wanted to transport some of the atmosphere and the lovely sets and the colour schemes and the fashion from the film to my blog. Here's some of what tickled my eye and shackled my gaze ...










Here it stops.
Brilliant wallpaper in the poshest bathroom ever - considering that it is 1960s Britain & the dress that the girl in the pink tights is wearing is fantastic enough to kill for.

Idle in the sun.

I really like Graham Coxon's teeth.
(And the rest of him.)

Yes, please!

Out June 22nd.
I am excited!

At Marsh End.

Although the title could be interpreted as a reference to my attempt at being a functional person in my own right without resorting to the undignified, pathetic and demeaning use of Rochesters and the like, it's also literally true because a considerable portion of my parents' garden has actually turned into a swamp-like landscape and is completely flooded by the lake. This information is, I assume, only amazing to me, as I have been living in this place all my life, and we have never ever had so much water.

In other news I have been working at the palace during the last 3 days, dealing with children (scary in theory, actually quite managable in practice, plus I got to dress up in what might be taken as a barely acceptable excuse for baroque dress), and getting to grips with the new text for the new exhibition and the general chaos caused thereby.

After work I skirted the forest/park to pluck Bear's Garlic which has been turned into soup and bread-spread. Tomorrow I'm going to make marmalade.

I have also been reading short stories by William Somerset Maugham and have caught up with Tschuschenpower (for outsiders, this is a - rather poor but brilliantly so - production by Austrian TV about a group of immigrant children from Vienna.) I was just getting into it, thinking, excellent, this is gonna be like Skins in Ottakring (!), when I found it in shock that there are and will be only 5 episodes. WTF! Rip-off.

I'm going to see PJ Harvey so soon.

The Dø.

I had never heard of The Dø before, until about half an hour ago. Another band that attracted me solely through their name. They're sadly not at all as Norwegian as it promises, but rather French instead.
I gotta say I dig. Quite sweet.




I like the lyrics, haha.

Lush and ravaged ...

'Live here most of your life and know nothing about the people. It's astonishing. They are children - they wouldn't hurt a fly.'
'Unhappily children do hurt flies,' said Aunt Cora.

This is from Wide Sargasso Sea. Though I am a bit unnerved by post-colonial themes in general, the above passage had to be underlined. Maybe because it is rather universal anyway. But I am not sure, if maybe I am now rethinking my attitude towards certain types of literature, and certain topics. Maybe I'm getting a taste for revolution.



I am a defiant child.
Yes, and it was time to rehabilitate that dress. I've made up for my cruel and unfair treatment of it and repaired the rip. Now it can go out again. With swimming pool blue tights.
I'm currently dressing against the weather, because it's actually quite cold outside, but I just will not put up with it. So I'll dress for spring until it comes!

And Jean Rhys one more time.

I took another road, past the old sugar works and the water wheel that had not turned for years. I went to parts of Coulibri that I had not seen, where there was no road, no path, no track. And if the razor grass cut my legs and arms I would think 'It's better than people.' Black ants or red ones, tall nests swarming with white ants, rain that soaked me to the skin - once I saw a snake. All better than people.
Better. Better, better than people.
Watching the red and yellow flowers in the sun thinking of nothing, it was as if a door opened and I was somewhere else, something else. Not myself any longer.
I knew the time of day when though it is hot and blue and there are no clouds, the sky can have a very black look.